Now that Windows 7 has settled in inside consumer homes after the considerable marketing push from retail, attention is turning to Microsoft's next step in development – the first Service Pack.
Just to be extra safe, many IT professionals prefer to wait until at least the first Service Pack for a Windows version before implementing a new version of the OS into their departments. The reason is that the first massive wave of users will already have hit the OS to clear out any possible bugs and compatibility issues.
According to source of TechARP, Microsoft initially planned a 22-month development period for Windows 7 SP1 but is now looking to bump that up to a release sometime within 2010.
We've heard from various other sources that the updated target for SP1 is sometime this summer or fall, the TechARP's sources point to the last (presumably calendar) quarter of 2010. Such a release would put Windows 7's first service pack on a similar RTM-to-SP1 schedule that Windows XP and Windows Vista had.
While Microsoft hasn't detailed exactly what SP1 will bring, many expect it just to be a massive collection of the incremental patches and updates that are already presently available from Windows Update.
